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Heritage and Lightning at the Lacombe Pro Bull Riding
Walking through the downtown core of Lacombe, Alberta, feels a bit like stepping onto a movie set from 1910.
After a massive fire in 1906 burned down the original wooden commercial buildings, the town mandated that all new structures be built of brick. It created a stunning, uniform downtown of heavy red brick, ornate cornices, and ghost signs. The residential streets are lined with incredibly preserved Edwardian and Queen Anne Revival homes featuring steep rooflines and wrap-around verandas.
But Lacombe doesn't just "remember" its history; it actively preserves it in the mortar. And that history is deeply tied to the dirt. In 1907, the federal government established the Lacombe Experimental Farm. This facility helped write the book on Canadian agriculture, spending over a century researching soil, crops, and even developing the first livestock breed in Canada.
It is a town built on a century of intense agricultural research, architectural preservation, and pioneer grit. And on Saturday, July 25th, that legacy of grit was put to the ultimate test in the dirt of the Lacombe Pro Bull Riding.
Steel, Smoke, and Static
If the City of Lacombe is known for preserving the past, the rodeo arena is where the community gathers to preserve the western way of life. But Mother Nature doesn't always make that easy.
As a rodeo photographer, you learn to adapt to the elements, but Saturday night was hands-down one of the most difficult nights I’ve had behind the lens in recent memory. A thick, choking wildfire smoke haze had settled heavily over the arena. It gave my camera an absolute workout, forcing me to constantly battle the settings just to pull any kind of quality out of the murky air. It was a massive reminder of the perfectly imperfect reality of this job—sometimes, despite all the gear and experience, the elements just win.
But the smoke wasn't the only thing hanging in the air.
Throughout the night, thunderstorms were rolling into the region. Because the smoke haze was so impossibly thick, you couldn't actually see the storm clouds building above the arena. All you could see were the jagged flashes of lightning illuminating the smoke from the inside out.
I spent the evening shooting alongside the photographer for Big O Rodeo, and we were both extremely hesitant to be leaning against the massive steel arena panels. When the sky is full of lightning you can't see, that uneasy feeling of "what if" stays in the back of your mind all night.
Electricity in the Chutes
But we weren't the only ones feeling the static. You could definitely tell the bovine athletes felt that electricity in the air.
The Big O photographer, who is around these animals constantly, made a comment right away about how the bulls weren't acting the way they normally do. And you could see it. I could see the way they were acting in the chutes, and I could see the unpredictable energy they carried after they were done bucking. The static and the hidden thunderstorms were heavily affecting the bulls.
And man, did they ever buck.
They put on an absolute show, creating chaos in the dirt and giving the safety man a serious workout. He definitely honed his roping skills on Saturday, as he had to rope an unusually high number of animals just to get them cleared out of the arena.
And then there were the bullfighters. I don't know if our one bullfighter had a death wish, or if the bovine athletes just didn't like his cologne, but the bulls magnetically went after him all night long. He found himself put in some incredibly precarious situations. Thankfully, he never got injured, and it became almost comedic how the bulls just seemed to target him over anyone else.
But all jokes aside, both bullfighters did a fantastic job. As always, they stepped right into the chaos, protected the athletes, and expertly directed those fired-up bulls away from the riders after a buck off.
The Toll of the Static
Going back to that heavy electricity in the air, the wild energy from the bulls made it incredibly hard-pressed for the riders to get a qualified score.
It was an absolute battle of attrition. Out of 25 riders who nodded their heads in the long go, only three managed to make the eight-second whistle and put a score on the board.
We had Mason Hamilton, Elijah Gordon, and Jestin Jacklin step up and do the impossible, securing the only three qualified rides of the long go to guarantee their spots in the Alberta Boot Company Short Go Championship round. To fill out the final eight-man roster, five other riders had to be added in based simply on who managed to stay on their bull the longest before getting bucked off.
The Pen Wins the Pot
If you ever needed proof of how dominant the contractors and their bulls were on Saturday night, look no further than the Calcutta.
Lacombe ran a massive Calcutta for the short go, with a portion of that incredible pot staying right at home to support local agricultural and rodeo efforts. The crowd was heavily invested, bidding on the final riders to take the win. But in the short go, it wasn't a rider who paid out.
The winning bidder who wisely put their money on the "pen of bulls" took home the massive Calcutta payout.
With that heavy electricity still hanging in the air, the bulls were completely untamed. They wanted out of the chutes, they wanted to buck, and they wanted to get back on the trailer and go home. They proceeded to buck off every single one of the final eight riders in the championship round, making it a clean sweep for the bovine athletes.
That absolute shutdown in the short go left Mason Hamilton’s gritty, hard-fought long go score of 81.5 to stand as the highest of the night. Mason took home the Alberta Boot Company Championship title, earning every single point of it against a pen of bulls that simply refused to lose.
Standing Through the Storm
Leaving the arena that night, the smoke was still thick and the invisible lightning was still flashing behind the haze. It was a wild, exhausting, and perfectly imperfect night of grassroots rodeo. But just like the century-old brick buildings sitting downtown, the western heritage in Lacombe is built to withstand the storm.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Lee J. Kemp
Every Moment Is A Choice Studio 🔗 emiacstudio.ca
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